Special Educational Needs

A history of special education

In the
early part of the 20th century, ideas about the provision of education for
children with special needs were based on a medical model of ‘defects’. This model
focused on difference rather than nor­mality, on illness rather than well
being, and particularly on the ‘problem’ with the child (Lewis, 1999). Children
were given medically diagnosed cate­gories with the emphasis on deficit rather
than potential. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that edu­cation for children
with special educational needs originally took the form of separate, special
schools for those who were thought to need them. Psychometric testing by early
psychologists (such as Cyril Burt) also confirmed this type of approach to
disability and difference.

The educational reforms of 1944

In
1944, significant reforms to the education system were brought into effect.
Most of these reforms were directed at mainstream education and the provision of
free education for all. The 1944 Act also addressed certain aspects of
education for children with special needs. However, its approach to, and
definitions of children with special needs was not as liberating as its
prescriptions for education in gen­eral.The act still focused on a medical model of dis­ability.It established eleven categories of
‘handicap’, and children falling into these categories were described in terms
of the ‘treatment’ they could receive.Special schools were still seen as the most appropriate way to educate
children with special needs, although limited recognition was given to the
provision of educationin mainstream
schools. The 1944 act still referred to children who ‘suffered from a disability
of mind or body’, and so clearly focused on special schools’ as catering for
‘handi­capped’ children.

Education through the 1960s and 70s

In
the 1960s and 70s, work with children with spe­cial needs moved towards an
approach favoured by behaviourist psychologists. This approach stressed the
need to use operant conditioning techniques. Behaviourists rejected the medical
model and advo­cated an approach that dealt with only what they could observe.
Some criticized this as a major weak­ness. However, this work was very impor­tant
because it stressed the possibility of modifying the problems of children with
special needs and placed the responsibility of that modification with the
teacher (Lewis. 1999).

Behaviourist
techniques were seen as very effec­tive in helping with particular difficulties
— self-help skills, for example. But they were seen to be less effective in
helping children with tasks that involved more understanding. As Lewis argues:

Neo-behaviourists attempted to meet some of the criti­cisms of
behaviourists’ approaches by giving some place to ‘cognitive mediation’. This
attempted to explain how, for example, memory of failure might inhibit a child
from reading words correctly despite being consistently praised when they were
read correctly. It was recog­nized that children were responding not to some
neutral event in teaching but to their perceptions of that event. So for an
adolescent with learning difficulties, receiving praise from the teacher for
correct answers might be perceived as
embarrassing rather than encouraging. Thus positive reinforcement might be counter­productive’ (Lewis 1999, p.
47).

The
1960s and 70s paved the way for a new approach to special needs. Attitudes to
special edu­cation in general started to change, and in part the behaviourist
initiatives made the teaching of chil­dren with learning difficulties seem more
accessible to teachers in mainstream schools. These ideas helped to promote the
possibility of inclusion of children with special educational needs.

The Warnock Report

The
Warnock Report in 1978 was based on the find­ings of a committee set up to
review the provision for children with mental and physical disabilities. The
report made 225 recommendations, one of which was to abolish the use of
categories, which it saw as damaging
and irrelevant. The Warnock Committee advocated a continuum of special needs, rather than discrete categories. The
Commit­tee’s research suggested that only 2 per cent of the school population
required separate educational provision, but that there were another 18 per
cent of children who would require special provision in normal schools. Warnock
argued that this 18 per cent had always been there, but that there had not been
a consistent effort to integrate these children in the system.

However, legislation is gradually catching up with
these recommendations. The Warnock Report formed the basis of the 1981
Education Act’s poli­cies (enforced in 1983) on special educational needs
(SEN), which introduced a quite different approach to the definition of
children with SEN:

A child will have a special educational need
if s/he has a learning difficulty requiring special educational provi­sion. The
‘learning difficulty’ includes not only physical and mental disabilities, but
also any kind of learning dif­ficulty experienced by a child, provided that it
is signifi­cantly greater than that of the majority of children of the same
age.

The
Act went Further in stating that the education of children with SEN should be
carried out in ordinary schools where possible. The Act therefore empha­sized
an approach that is in favour of inclusion and integration, rather than
separation and isolation. This approach advocates that children with special
needs should be treated as individuals, and that the particular resources that
each child needs should be allocated to that child — for example, that the
child should have a learning support teacher with them in the classroom, rather
than being taken out of the class.

Recent educational reform

More
recent educational reform (such as the Educa­tion Act of 1993) has continued to
push for an inclusive approach. There are now legal require­ments that oblige
schools to provide for children with learning difficulties (in line with a Code
of Practice established in 1994). All schools had to publish their SEN policies
before August 1995, and name a SEN Co-ordinator (SENCO) on their staff (Child,
1997). The 1994 Code of Practice is cur­rently under review and a new Code is
due to be published in 2001. Similarly, sixth form colleges and colleges of
further education have to appoint an inclusive learning co-ordinator, and find
ways of improving education and training for those with learning difficulties
and/or disabilities, and of widening participation among people under-represented
in further education (FEFC, 1998).

Commentary

The medical model is now criticized for being de­humanizing,
and treating children like objects (Lewis, 1 999). It groups vague symptoms
together and assumes they can be treated in the same way. Some, however, draw
attention to the value of some parts of this model. For example, Bailey (1998)
argues that this kind of model includes the rigorous approach of a scientific
analysis to the problems, in order to establish causes and treatments.

Definitions of learning difficulties

In its
broadest sense, the term ‘special needs’ can be applied to any student who
requires some sort of special educational treatment as a result of difficul­ties
in one or more of the following areas.

•Social—emotional: students
with ADHD, autism and so on.

•Physical: students with
sensory deficits (visual or hearing impairments), cerebral palsy, epilepsy and
so on.

•Intellectual: students
with learning difficulties.

Social—emotional
and physical difficulties can have a lasting impact on an individual’s
education, but these kinds of problem tend to be diagnosed and treated by
professionals working outside the educa­tional system (for example, clinical
psychologists), although specialist educational units do exist for children
with such difficulties.

The term ‘learning difficulty’ is used to define a
number of conditions. Most descriptions of learning difficulties highlight four
groups of characteristics (LeFrancois, 1997).

1There is a noticeable difference between expected behaviour and
actual behaviour, in terms of per­formance in tests and so on.

2There is an uneven pattern of academic achieve­ment that cannot be
explained by other factors (such as disinterest).

3Learning disabilities are
often noticed in the use of written or spoken language or numeracy.

4Problems associated with learning disabilities do not result from
other problems, such as impaired hearing or vision.

Historically,
the various terms used to describe dif­ferent degrees of learning difficulty (mild, moder­ate, severe and profound were related to specific IQ levels. This approach tended to label
individuals, and to ignore their actual abilities and difficulties. More
recently, there is recognition that all students can have difficulties with their
learning, but that cer­tain students have difficulties that require special
help. Students with learning difficulties are gener­ally categorized as
follows.

•Moderate learning difficulty
(MLD): students who can be taught in mainstream schools with some learning
support.

•Severe learning difficulty
(SLD): students who require a much higher degree of specialist sup­port —
usually within special units or schools.

•Profound and multiple learning
difficulty (PMLD): students with very serious intellectual difficulties,
combined with sensory and other physical impairments.

There
is also a category for students with difficulties that are not related to
general impairments in intel­lectual ability.

•Specific learning difficulty
(SPLD): these refer to conditions such as dyslexia and dyscalculia.

Identifying learning difficulties

The
1994 Code of Practice describes five stages through which school children will
pass if they are suspected of having a learning difficulty.

•Stage 1: if teachers feel that a certain child may have SEN, they
place the child on the school’s SEN Register, and try to help the child as best
they can within the classroom. In some cases, ini­tial recognition of a
potential learning difficulty may come from a parent.

•Stage 2: if the individual
teachers feel they are failing to provide the support and help needed by the
child, they refer him/her to the SEN Co­ordinator (SENCO), who takes
responsibility for the child’s special educational needs. The SENCO draws up an
Individual Education Plan (IEP) to
monitor the level of difficulty experienced by the child and to see if the
school’s interventions are helping.

•Stage 3: if the SENCO feels
that the child is not being helped enough, s/he will use specialist sup­port
from outside the school (educational psy­chologist, speech and language
therapy. family consultation centres, hearing advisory service. visual
impairment advisory service and so on1. These outside agencies
contribute to the IEP.

•Stage 4: if, following two
reviews of the IEP, it is still felt that the child is not making appropriate
progress, the school applies to the LEA for statu­tory’ assessment of the
child, in order to obtain extra resources and help.

•Stage 5: if the child
receives an SEN statement from the local education authority (LEA), then there
are mandatory requirements, and extra funding, for the school to provide
special help for the child (for example, annual review of needs and learning
support assistants in the classroom).

Commentary

•An SEN statement is a formal recognition that a child has a special
need as a result of some kind of learning difficulty. It is useful to the child
to be statemented in this way as it means that the child will receive extra
support; without a statement, the LEA will not provide any funds. In practice,
the special help received by statemented children often consists of a learning
sup­port assistant (LSA). The LSA is an adult who spends a specified number of
hours a week in the classroom with the statemented child. However, it is not
always the case that this is the most effective way of support­ing a particular
child.

•In marginal cases of learning difficulty, it can be quite hard to
get a child statemented, and parents often have a long fight to achieve this.
As a result, parents who have the resources for this (for example, they are
middle-class with a high level of cultural capital) are more likely to get
their children statemented and therefore more likely to obtain special
educational provision.

Who has
special needs?

As of January 1999 approximately 250,000 pupils in
schools in England had special educational need (SEN) statements. Sixty per
cent of students with statements were educated within mainstream schools (ONS
2000).

In 1998/1999, two out of three
pupils in special schools were boys (The Standards Site 2000).

In 1997/1998 the exclusion rate
for students with SEN statements was seven times the rate for students without
statements (ONS 2000).

Daniels et al. (1996) in studying twenty junior
schools in one inner city LEA found ‘worrying imbalances’ in gender and racial
backgrounds in regard to certain categories of SEN. The researchers found that
male and female black students were more likely to be allocated to the learning
difficulty group rather than the reading difficulty group; whereas similar
numbers of white students were allocated to the learning difficulty group and
the reading difficulty group. Further researchers noted that black males were
more likely to be categorised as having emotional and behavioural difficulties
than white males. It is stated that further research is needed to determine to
what extent teacher assumptions regarding ‘black and white masculinity and
femininity account for these gender differences’ (Arnot et al. 1998, p. 65).

Overview of
some specific types of learning disabilities

In
addition to global learning disabilities an individual could receive a
diagnosis of a specific learning disability — for example, dyslexia or a
condition such as autism or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

Individuals would receive a diagnosis from a
combination of doctors, psychologists (educational or clinical) and
psychiatrists. Medical reports and diagnostic tools such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders, DSM-IV, and International
Standard Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, ICD-10,
would be used. It is crucial to note that many conditions are in fact
syndromes. A syndrome is a group of related symptoms or behavioural traits.
This means that even individuals with the same condition will not have
identical symptoms or behavioural traits. To complicate this situation, one
individual will often have more than one type of disability. Professionals
refer to this as co-morbidity. For example, one student might have dyslexia
with ADHD. To complicate the issue further there might be additional physical
or sensory disabilities, medical conditions, such as epilepsy, or mental health
issues, such as depression. The reality is that this complexity in diagnosis
means that intervention strategies need to be targeted to the individual’s unique
pattern of strengths and weaknesses. It is also crucial when talking about
individuals with learning disabilities or special educa­tional needs that we
realise that an individual is first and foremost an individual in their own
right and that their own unique personality will be apparent.

Strategies for educating children with special
needs

A key
element in stage 2 of the Code of Practice is the development of individual
educational plans or IEPs. An IEP is appropriate for all students with special
educational needs and as such IEPs should be considered as a key intervention.
There has been much guidance and commentary in regard to what constitutes an
effective IEP. Ramjhun (1995) discusses the features of a good IEP. An IEP will
identify the child’s current level of attainments. The IEP will then set
targets. The targets must be related to the areas of difficulty, and be
specific, measurable, achievable and teachable given current resources.

Targets
need to be related specifically to success criteria or indicators, which can be
objectively measured. The nature of resources or provision needs to be set out
and methods of monitoring specified. Monitoring methods include: record
keeping, arranging various meetings to co-ordinate the provision of IEPs, and
of course reviews of IEPs.

Evaluation of IEPs

First we can say that the targets need to be
achievable so that the child feels that they are progressing, which in turn
would be reinforcing or motivating. However an IEP is an incredibly
time-consuming process, especially when you consider that IEPs will need to be
constantly monitored and reviewed. Yet constant monitoring is essential in
order to determine the extent of progress and continuing need. Dyson (1996),
after carrying out research with SENCOs in the former Cleveland LEA, commented
that schools might consider a value added criterion when it comes to deciding
whether to draw up an IEP; that is, to only consider doing so if the educational
benefit to the child could not be secured in a less time- and
resource-intensive way.

Picture Exchange Communication
System (PECS)

Andrew
Bondy and Lori Frost developed the Picture Exchange Communication System in the
early I 990s when they were working with the Delaware Autistic Program.
Although originally the pro­gramme was used to foster communication with young
autistic children, it is now used with older children and adults who have a
range of communication difficulties. The aim of PECS is to give a means of
communication to individuals who previously have had none. The system revolves
around the concept of exchanging pictures for desired objects. To begin with,
the teacher needs to establish what the child finds rewarding. Several objects
(crisps, a carton of juice, and various toys) are placed on a table and the
child is observed in order to deter­mine what his or her preferences are. Once
preferences are established, pictures of preferred objects are made into cards.
The next stage of the programme involves the child being shown the picture of
the preferred object and the preferred object itself.To receive the preferred object the child must give the picture
card to the trainer. Once the child has done this, they receive the preferred
object. To begin with, the child might need some physical guidance and
prompting. This is the first exchange. From these small beginnings other
picture cards are intro­duced. Eventually children are encouraged to use
picture cards in combination to form sentences. Children using this system will
carry around personalised books of picture cards, which include a Velcro strip
to which they add picture cards (backed with Velcro) to form sentences.

Bondy and Frost (1994) summarising work with
eighty-five autistic pre-school children over five years found that:

•Almost all children learned to use one picture to communicate a
request within one month of starting the programme.

•95 per cent of children learned to use two or more pictures.

•76 per cent of the children developed some speech through the
training programme.

In
summary, the programme not only offered a practical form of communication to
those who had none but, for many, speech developed with the use of this
programme.

Social skills training

Many
individuals with global learning disabilities and individuals with autism or
Asperger syndrome will benefit from social skills training.This issue becomes increasingly important as
the individual prepares to leave school and enter the adult world of work and
further training.Social skills
programmes would cover such areas as greetings, appro­priate eye contact,
welcoming visitors, accepting correction, speaking with authority figures and
conversation skills. Most programmes cover the following components. The
individual by themselves or in a group will receive specific instructions in
regard to a specific skill. The teacher will demonstrate the social skill. Next
there will be role-play where the individual practises the skill. Then there
will be feedback, possibly more role-play and rehearsal. Howlin and Yates
(1996) reported the following benefits after a social skills programme aimed at
adults with autism:

•Speech became less repetitive.

•Improvement in conversational skills including offering
information and asking questions.

However,
Howlin and Yates (1996) note that there are problems in generalising skills
acquired in the group setting of a social skills class to the outside world.
Howlin (1997) tells the story of Jerome, who within the context of a social
skills group received instruction on how to initiate and maintain conversations
with young women. Even with training Jerome found it difficult to meet women,
until he came up with a solution.

His solution for finding the best place to meet as
many single women as possible was a simple one — inside the local ladies
lavatory! When arrested by the police, he clearly had no perception of why this
behaviour had got him into trouble.

(Howlin 1997, p. 92)

Another
way of improving complex social skills involves the creation of social stories.

In terms of a cause it was first speculated that
dyslexia could be attributed to deficits in the visual system as certain
children with dyslexia were prone to reversing letters, such as reading a ‘b’ for a ‘d’. However, more recent research (Shaywitz 1996) has argued that
dyslexia should be seen as a deficit in language processing involving, in
particular, problems with phonological decoding. Phonemes are the distinctive
linguistic or sound units that in combination create words. Knowledge of the
association between verbal sounds and the corres­ponding written form is a
skill necessary for reading and writing. For example, the word cat is made up of
three sounds, kuh —aah — tuh, but is spelt cat. There are
twenty-six letters in the alphabet and these letters in combination form the
forty-four sounds that the English language employs. The difficulty in reading
and spelling is that words are often not spelt the way they sound and that
different letter combinations represent the same sound. For example, Hardwick
(1997) states that the ee sound can be spelt in ten different ways. They are: e
(me), ee (see), ey (key), ea (eat), ie (thief), ei (seize), e-e (cede), eo
(people), i-e (magazine) and ae (encyclopaedia).

Ellis (1993) postulated a simple model for reading
which can be applied to individuals with dyslexia. Ellis’s model utilises the
following components:

•Visual Analysis System: recognition
of shapes and position of shapes.

What
Ellis (1993) is proposing is that all of these components are necessary to the
reading process. If there is difficulty in one of the components it does not
imply that reading is impossible but that it becomes more difficult as
alternative or less optimal pathways need to be taken. This view could be used
to explain the difficulties faced by dyslexic individuals. This view would also
imply that there could be several reasons why an individual was having
difficulty with reading.

In order to understand dyslexia, consideration of the
stages of normal reading development is needed. At the earliest stage, words
are identified on the basis of visual appearance. The child is making no use of
letter—sound correspondence and will make mistakes such as confusing black for back, as both words are of similar length and start and end with
the same letters. Children then progress on to the second stage of reading
which involves the use of phonics.

Just to complicate the
issue it is worth noting that controversy exists as to whether there is such a
condition as dyslexia. Dyslexia is diagnosed due to the discrepancy between
overall intelligence or ability and specific scores on reading and spelling
tests. This view implies that students who are good at most tasks but not
reading and spelling will receive a diagnosis of dyslexia, but those students
who are poor at all tasks will not be considered dyslexic even though they
might have the same problems. However, Aaron et al. (1988) argue that the cause of developmental dyslexia is
poor grapheme—phoneme (letter—sound) decoding skills, whereas the cause of
general reading delay with overall low levels of ability is poor comprehension.
On a practical level, what is important is that, if a child is having
difficulty with reading or spelling, intervention is given.

Effects of dyslexia

In
some ways the effects of dyslexia are stated within the definition as an inability
to read and write. Certainly ours is a literate society, with the consequence
that an inability to read and write would put an individual at a great
disadvantage. Magazines, books and information on computers are all presented
in a written format. We need to read to fill in forms: forms to enrol for
courses; forms to open a bank account; forms to apply for a job, a driving
licence, a passport— the list is endless. In addition to difficulties with
reading and spelling, some individuals with dyslexia will experience
difficulties in regard to maths, remem­bering, following complex instructions,
telling right from left and attending to tasks. Though the effects are in some
ways apparent there can be additional effects.

•Reading and spelling are basic prerequisite skills needed in order
to progress through the key stages of the National Curriculum.

•A competence at reading and spelling is needed if the child is to
achieve their academic potential.

•If diagnosis is not made, secondary negative effects could occur.
Teachers might label the child as lazy. The child, in trying to make sense of
their inability to succeed at a task that their peers are mastering, might
label himself or herself as stupid. This in turn could lead to lower levels of
self-esteem and possibly to disruptive behaviour.

It has
been argued that diagnosis needs to be made as early as possible so as to
prevent the child from experiencing failure.

Specific strategies for educating children
with dyslexia

In relation
to dyslexia there are a number of educational interventions. These include
structured written language programmes and multi-sensory teaching. Structured
language programmes include the ‘Alpha to Omega Programme’ and the ‘Bangor
Teaching Programme’. A structured programme sees learning to read and spell as
the acquisition of skills. The skills are cumulative in that basic skills need
to be laid down before more complex skills can be taught. In terms of a written
language programme the sequence of skill acquisition would be as follows:
letters, sound/symbol correspondence, blends (combinations of sounds), regular
words, polysyllabic words and syllabic division. The teacher would need to
assess what skills the child has and start from there.

Multi-sensory techniques involve the teaching of
phonics, but with an approach that uses the inter-relation between sensory
modalities, i.e. the connections between auditory, visual, kinaesthetic and
tactile modalities. Let us take the word cat. The individual hears the word cat (auditory), sees the word cat (visual), says the word cat (auditory), prints the word cat (kinaesthetic) and feels the word cat (tactile as it is written in wooden
two-dimensional letters). The rationale is that if there is a weakness with one
modality then there is a need to find an alternative way of learning which
capitalises on existing strengths in other modalities (Thomson 1990).

‘Teaching Today’ (Dyslexia
in the Primary Classroom 1997) gives the following examples of
multi-sensory teaching:

•Have children look in a mirror when reading words so that they can
see how sounds are formed by lip and tongue movements. This task is useful for
auditory discrimination, such as distinguishing the sound f from th.

•Tracing the letter shape on the table, in sand, in the air or on
someone’s back helps to establish what arm and hand movements correspond to
what letter. This process is enhanced if the child does the movement with a
blindfold on.

•With eyes shut the child holds a wooden letter to feel and
identify the letter.

•Running around big shapes and letters in the playground
establishes a whole-body feel for the shapes involved.

Further
ideas are suggested by Hardwick (1997) and include:

•Having students make their own tapes of spelling words to learn.
For instance, the child presses the button on the tape machine and first hears
themselves saying eat, then the child
pauses the tape machine, writes the word eat,
pushes the play button again and hears themselves spelling eat. They then pause the tape machine
and check their spelling. This process can be repeated.

•Flashcards can be used. On one side of the flashcard write the
target word, for example, my. On the
other side of the flashcard have the child write a sentence with the word my in it, that is, something personally
meaningful to them — for example, ‘My favourite animal is a hedgehog.’ Then
have the child draw a picture, perhaps of a hedgehog. It is hoped that the
personally meaningful sentence and the visual picture will serve as a reminder
of what the word looks like (Hardwick 1996).

Research, to
date, has served to identify which factors lead to successful teaching for
dyslexic children.It has been shown
that students with dyslexia do improve with:

•Multi-sensory
techniques.

•Individualised
instruction based on careful assessment.

•Small-group
or one-to-one teaching.

•Early
identification.

•Understanding
and encouragement.

•A structured
approach based on phonetic principles.

•Teaching to
strengths and offering remedial teaching aimed at weakness where appropriate.

•Mnemonics

•Help with
organisational skills.

•Exciting
classroom experiences and constructive support.

Students with
dyslexia do not improve with:

•Unspecific
methods, i.e. more reading or spelling.

•More attention.

•Being left to
grow out of it.

•Training in
visual or auditory skills alone (unless focused on written language).

•Patterning or
other neurological exercises to develop laterality.

•Punishments
or threats.

•Inappropriate
labelling. (Thompson 1990)

What
is still not known is what teaching method is suitable for a particular child
with dyslexia. Dyslexic children, though sharing common difficulties with
reading and spelling, will have their unique cognitive profiles outlining weakness
and strengths. The question remains as to whether to teach to strengths only
or whether to try to compensate for weakness. In terms of Ellis’s
theoretical model of read­ing, if the phoneme level is damaged, will intensive
teaching time result in improved phonological awareness, or should teaching
time be used to teach reading via a method that capitalises on strengths? This
issue was raised in an interesting case study (Brooks 1995) where an
11-year-old boy with severe specific learning difficulties/dyslexia was
systematically tested after a variety of intervention programmes aimed to
improve spelling. The boy, referred to as RG in the case study, was assessed as
having a reading age of 7 years and 6 months and a spelling age of 7 years and 5 months. Further tests revealed that RG
had weak­nesses in phonological skills and auditory memory. To assess various
teaching interventions, sets of words of similar difficulty were taught by
different teaching strategies and the success of each teaching strategy was
measured by words learned. The teaching strategies included:

•Look and say: the teacher
says the word and shows the word on a card for ten seconds.

•Tracing: the student is
shown the word and asked to say the word and
trace the letters of the word as if
writing them (Fernald 1943).

•Simultaneous oral spelling: the
teacher writes the word. The student is asked to write the word, copying from the teacher’s writing and at the same
time naming each letter of the word as
the student writes the word. The student is then asked to name the word and to check that the word has been written correctly
by comparing it with the teacher’s version (Bryant and Bradley 1985).

•Words in words: the
student is shown the word on a card and the teacher draws attention to any
meaningful parts of the word. For example, damaged
contains dam and age.

•Phonics: the student is
shown the word. The teacher sounds out the word. The sound corresponding to
each phoneme is represented by a letter. The teacher repeats the word. The student
is asked to sound out the word as the teacher has done and then to say the
word. For example, c-ar-t makes cart.

•Rules: the teacher shows
the word on a card and indicates any rules from the Cowdery Scheme. For
example, it is appropriate to spell skittles
with sk rather than sc as the rule states that sk is followed by the vowels, e, i, ory (Cowdery e tal. 1983).

•Baseline: word cards are
shown to the student. The student is required to say the word then spell the
word without the card being present. The student receives no instruction and is
not told whether they are correct or not.

It was
found that some methods produced better results than others did. For RG the
Look and say, Tracing, Words in words and Rule conditions produced significant
improvements in spelling over the Baseline, Phonics and Simultaneous oral
spelling conditions. The method of Words in words produced the maximum amount
of words learned. It would seem that the method of Words in words, instead of
focusing on what the student found difficult - that is, being aware of phonemes
- capitalised on his strengths. Brooks, commenting on this case study,
states that the results have implications for how individuals with dyslexia are
taught. The use of a structured approach to teaching, re­inforcement and
monitoring was not sufficient alone to produce significant improvements. To
ensure effective learning an investigation was needed to determine what method
worked best.

Dyslexia is a condition that affects many adults and
children within this country. There is currently more awareness of the
condition and current research is being geared to early diagnosis and
intervention and to establishing what types of intervention work best for what
individuals.

Real Life Application:

Research puts dyslexia test on new footing

A simple new
test has been designed to screen for dyslexia. It has been developed by
Kathleen Kelly, a teacher at a special school in Oldham, and involves children
counting while standing on one leg.

The
British Dyslexia Association estimates that between 6 per cent and 10 per cent
of the school population have dyslexia which, left undiagnosed, can cause
severe frustration and anxiety. Kelly’s test can differentiate between children
who have dyslexia and those who may be suspected of hav­ing dyslexia, but in
fact have difficulties associ­ated with learning English as an additional lan­guage.
Her research is based on previous evidence that shows that dyslexic children
may have problems with ‘automatic’ tasks, such as bal­ancing. In a trial
involving 210 eleven-year-old children the test was 98 per cent accurate in
diag­nosing dyslexia, as opposed to difficulties with English.

The
test takes about ten minutes and can be used on children who are eight years
and over. It involves testing a child’s ‘wobble factor’ under timed conditions,
then comparing this to a second balancing test in which an individualized count­ing
task is also included. The counting is to dis­tract the child from the effort
of balancing. The results of the test are then followed up, as it cannot
recognize the severity of the condition.

Article byKaren
Thornton adapted from the Times
Educational Supplement, 25 June 1999

Dyslexia and non-native English speakers

The application described above is interesting and
very relevant in the light of other evidence, which suggests that children
whose first language is not English are not being diagnosed with dyslexia. In
an article in the Times Higher Education
Supple­ment (11 June 1999), Karen Thornton cites the opinions of Lindsay
Peer, Education Director of the British Dyslexia Association. Peer argues that
many children who are trying to learn English, and who are also dyslexic are
not being diagnosed because their problems are put down to their difficulty
with English. These children are missing out on vital sup­port, as they may
also be having difficulty with their first language as a result of their
dyslexia. Thornton notes that the Department for Education and Employment is
funding a review of research into dyslexia and multilingualism.

Inclusion or segregation

Whether to include or segregate children with SEN into
mainstream schools is still a contentious issue, and one that is not easily
resolved. There is certainly a trend towards inclusion both within this country
and internationally at the present time. Many theo­rists believe that inclusive
education for children with SEN should be thought of as a ‘right’, whereas
others believe that it may mean that the teaching of SEN children becomes less
effective.

Continuum of provision

Public
policy in Britain supports the inclusion of as many SEN children as possible in
mainstream schools. The recent Green Paper on SEN (DfEE, 1997) states that there
should be a continuum of provision, including special schools where they are
needed (Hornby, 1999). The Green Paper states that:

We support the UNESCO Salemanca World
Statement on Special Needs Education. This calls on governments to adopt the
principle of inclusive education, enrolling all children in regular schools
unless there are compelling reasons for doing otherwise (cited in Hornby,
1999, p. 52).

A
recent American study of 1,000 school districts (Lipsky and Gartner, 1998;
cited by Hornby, 1999) showed that there were seven important factors that were
necessary to make inclusion a success.

1Visionary leadership

2Collaboration

3Use of careful assessment

4Support for staff and students

5Appropriate funding

6Parental involvement

7Effective models to adapt the curriculum and teaching practices in
appropriate ways.

Initiatives and criticisms of inclusion

The
kinds of initiative that are likely to work are obviously very costly. In
Britain there are different schools of thought about the best way to include
children with SEN. Some theorists would argue that total inclusion is
important, whereas others, such as Marston (1996) found that students who were
taken out of classes and taught in special groups for some activities did
better than those who received support in classes.

One of the criticisms of full inclusion is that it focuses on the process of the
education rather than the outcome, and on the curriculum of mainstream
education rather than the curriculum of SEN (Hornby, 1999).

Some
studies have focused on the attitudes of SEN children and their parents to
inclusive educa­tion. The majority of parents supported inclusion if there were
sufficient resources provided alongside the programme. Kidd and Hornby (1993)
carried out a survey in which they questioned 29 sets of parents of children
who had ‘moderate’ learning dif­ficulties. These children had been transferred
from special schools into mainstream schools. Kidd and Hornby found that 65 per
cent of the parents and 76 per cent of the children were ‘satisfied’ with the
transfer. However, they found that there was a dif­ference in how happy the
parents were depending on what kind of inclusion the children experienced. Some
47 per cent of parents of children included in mainstream classes were happy,
compared to 92 per cent of parents of children placed in units in main­stream
schools (Hornby, 1999).

As early as 1978, Warnock distinguished between social integration (integration in
leisure time), loca­tional integration
(where a separate unit is located on a mainstream school site) and functional
inte­gration (where children are included in mainstream schools) (Child, 1997).
The trend towards inclusion is growing, but there is still a ‘substantial
propor­tion’ of children in segregated units, and there is still some way to go
before there is enough evidence about the outcomes of inclusion to draw valid
con­clusions.

Commentary.

Although
inclusion is seen as a very positive strategy by some educationalists, it is considered
idealistic and impractical by others.

•Some critics have argued that social and academic inclusion happens
at the expense of good and appro­priate education for the other children in the
class; in other words, if a student with special needs is taught within a
mainstream class, s/he might need extra attention from the teacher, or may be
disruptive or difficult in the class, and this could harm other chil­dren’s
education. On the other hand, it can be argued that the other children in the
class benefit a great deal from working with students with special needs and
that inclusive education helps to remove stereotypes and ignorance (see the
Real Life application below).

•It is also argued that children with SEN are
themselves better off in segregated classrooms as this enables them to gain
social support from others with similar difficulties, and it allows LEAs to
concentrate its spe­cialist teachers and resources in one place. The objection
to this is that the disadvantage of keeping children with certain difficulties
together is that it makes it harder for them to integrate fully into society
once they leave school. If specific teacher skills are required to deal with
certain children, then it is easier (and cheaper) to train a few teachers and concentrate
them in specialist units, but this is not necessarily bet­ter in educational
terms; the attitudes and skills of teachers are fundamentally important. and
there is a need to combat negative attitudes from inexperi­enced and untrained
staff.

•At first glance it may seem that providing
special schools and units for children with SEN is a more expensive option than
integrating those children into mainstream classrooms. However, the cost of
provid­ing specialist resources and proper training for teach­ers in all
schools is much more costly than concen­trating on fewer teachers in special
units. One criti­cism that has been made of recent practice is that children
with SEN have been integrated into main­stream classrooms ‘on the cheap’, and
that the train­ing and special resources have not been provided to an
appropriate level.

Real Life Application:

Inclusive education is a ‘human right’

A human rights
approach to inclusive education argues that the problems of inclusion do not
come from the individual, but the discriminatory atti­tudes in society. The
article argues that:

Issues of social justice, equity and choice
are central to the demands for inclusive education... Special education entails
a discourse of exclusion and this is seen as a particularly offensive aspect of
provision.

From
this perspective, no one should be left out of school. The article argues that
special schools exist because of the limitations of mainstream schools. The
article criticizes the government Green Paper because it argues that it does
not make explicit where the funding will come from for the resources needed in
inclusive education. The article concludes with a plea for inclusive education:

Inclusive education is about belonging. It is
about citizenship with all the entitlements and responsibilities involved. It
is about the enrich­ment of all children and the importance of estab­lishing a
sense of community based on co-opera­tion, respect and the celebration of
difference with dignity.

Adapted from an article (which reproduced extracts from a lecture given by Len Barton,
Professor of Education at Sheffield University), in Socialist Teacher, no. 65, 1998

Strategies for educating children with special needs

COPING WITH DEAFNESS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the UK, approximately 85 percent of deaf children attend
mainstream
school. How well they cope varies hugely from one child to the next.

To investigate the coping strategies deaf children use, David Martin and
Yael Bat-Chava (League for the Hard of Hearing) interviewed the parents of
35 deaf children (average age 8.5 yrs; 20 girls, 15 boys), 31 of whom
attended mainstream school full-time, 4 part-time. The children exhibited a
range of hearing loss from severe to profound, meaning none of them could
hear without aids. However, all used speech to communicate, 85.7 percent
exclusively. Twenty-five of the children had cochlear implants (converts
acoustic sound waves into weak electric currents delivered to the immediate
vicinity of the auditory nerve) and 10 used hearing aids.

From qualitative analysis of the interviews, Martin and Bat-Chava found
that overall, and irrespective of their degree of deafness, the children
had successfully established relationships with their hearing peers.

However, they found that the coping strategies that best predicted
successful relationships with hearing friends differed greatly between the
girls and boys. For the girls, both inner (e.g. being able to play alone)
and outer (e.g. having the confidence to ask people to repeat themselves)
coping strategies predicted greater success with hearing friends. By
contrast, for boys, the strongest predictor by far was their ability to
perform in team sports.